Privacy Policy

METY Foundation (“METY,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) provides educational tools designed to help students understand and reflect on their knowledge through self-assessments and related learning services.

Protecting the privacy of students, children, parents, teachers, and other users is important to us. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, how we use and protect it, when it may be shared, and the choices available to parents and users.

METY is designed for educational use, including use by children. We take additional precautions when handling information associated with children under 13.

1. Who This Policy Applies To

This Privacy Policy applies to users of METY's websites, applications, self-assessment tools, parent and teacher portals, and related educational services.

Users may include:

• Students
• Children under 13
• Parents and legal guardians
• Teachers and educators
• Schools and educational organizations
• Adult users
• Visitors using an assessment without creating an account

Some METY features may be available without creating an account. Other features, such as saving assessment history, managing student profiles, or viewing authorized student records, may require an account.

2. Information We Collect

We collect only information that we reasonably need to provide, operate, secure, and improve METY's educational services.

A. Information Provided by Students

Depending on the feature being used, a student may provide information such as:

• First name or display name
• Grade level
• Age or age-related information, such as birth month and year
• Subject or topic being studied
• Preferred language
• Answers to self-assessment questions
• Reflections or other educational responses

Students should not enter unnecessary personal information into self-assessment responses.

We ask users not to include information such as:

• Home addresses
• Telephone numbers
• Personal email addresses
• Social Security numbers
• Passwords
• Financial information
• Precise location
• Other sensitive personal information

in free-text assessment responses.

B. Information Used to Obtain Parental Consent

A child may be permitted to provide a limited amount of information for the purpose of starting the parental-consent process.

This may include:

• The child's first name or display name
• Age or birth month and year
• Parent or guardian email address

We use this information only as necessary to determine whether parental consent is required and to contact the parent or guardian.

Providing this information does not by itself authorize METY to collect additional personal information from a child under 13.

Where verifiable parental consent is required, METY will not permit the child to use features requiring such consent until the required consent has been obtained.

If parental consent is not received within a reasonable period, information collected solely for the purpose of requesting consent will be deleted unless retention is required by law or necessary for security or fraud prevention.

3. Children Under 13

METY is intended to support educational use by students, including children under the age of 13.

We seek to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and other applicable children's privacy requirements.

When COPPA applies, METY will provide the child's parent or legal guardian with notice describing:

• The information we intend to collect
• Why the information is being collected
• How the information will be used
• Whether information may be disclosed to service providers or other parties
• How the parent can provide consent
• How the parent can review or delete the child's information
• How the parent can withdraw consent

Where required, METY obtains verifiable parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from a child under 13, except where COPPA permits limited information to be collected without prior consent.

A child will not be required to provide more personal information than is reasonably necessary to participate in an educational activity.

4. Parental Consent

When parental consent is required, we may ask a parent or guardian to verify their identity or relationship to the child using a method reasonably designed to confirm that the individual providing consent is the child's parent or legal guardian.

A parent may:

• Consent to the collection and use of their child's information
• Decline consent
• Review personal information associated with their child
• Request corrections where appropriate
• Request deletion
• Withdraw previously provided consent
• Prevent further collection of their child's personal information

Withdrawal of consent may limit the child's ability to use features that require stored personal information.

To exercise these rights, contact us using the information in the Contact Us section below.

We may take reasonable steps to verify that a person requesting access to a child's information is authorized to do so.

5. Parent Accounts

Parents or guardians may create accounts to manage educational information associated with their children.

Depending on the available features, parents may be able to:

• Create or manage child profiles
• Review completed assessments
• Review assessment history
• Provide or withdraw consent
• Authorize a teacher or educator to view certain student records
• Remove teacher access
• Request deletion of a child's information

A parent's account information may include:

• Name
• Email address
• Authentication information
• Child-profile relationships
• Consent records
• Account preferences

Passwords are not intended to be stored in readable form by METY.

6. Teacher and Educator Accounts

Teachers and educators may create accounts to use METY's educational services.

Information may include:

• Name
• Email address
• School or educational organization
• Account information
• Students or classes the educator is authorized to access

Creating a teacher account does not automatically provide access to a student's private information.

Teachers may access identifiable student records only when appropriate authorization exists, such as authorization from a parent, guardian, school, or other legally permitted source.

METY may use technical controls to restrict student information to authorized users.

7. Guest Self-Assessments

Some users may complete a self-assessment without creating an account.

A guest assessment may ask for educational information such as:

• Subject
• Grade or learning level
• Topic
• Language
• Responses to assessment questions

Where possible, METY seeks to minimize the personal information associated with guest assessments.

Completing a guest assessment does not automatically create a student account.

If a user later chooses to save an assessment to an account, additional information may be required.

Users should not enter unnecessary personally identifiable information in guest assessment responses.

8. Information Collected Automatically

Like most online services, METY may automatically receive limited technical information when a user visits or uses the service.

This may include:

• IP address
• Browser type
• Device type
• Operating system
• Date and time of access
• Pages or features accessed
• Error and diagnostic information
• Security logs
• Cookie or session identifiers

We use this information to:

• Operate the service
• Maintain login sessions
• Protect accounts
• Prevent abuse
• Diagnose technical problems
• Measure basic service performance
• Maintain security

For children, persistent identifiers and similar technical information will be used and retained only as permitted by applicable law.

9. Cookies and Similar Technologies

METY may use cookies or similar technologies that are necessary to:

• Keep users signed in
• Maintain secure sessions
• Remember basic settings
• Protect against fraud or abuse
• Operate the website reliably

METY does not use children's personal information for behavioral advertising.

METY does not permit third-party advertising networks to create advertising profiles of children through the service.

With a visitor's consent (given through our cookie banner), METY uses a privacy-focused analytics tool on its public marketing pages only — never on any page where a student is taking or has taken an assessment, and never to build an advertising profile of anyone. It measures overall site traffic and is off by default until a visitor actively opts in.

10. How We Use Information

We may use information collected through METY to:

• Provide educational self-assessments
• Generate assessment questions
• Translate educational content
• Display assessment results
• Save assessment history when requested
• Create and manage user accounts
• Manage child profiles
• Obtain and record parental consent
• Allow authorized parents and teachers to review educational records
• Personalize educational content
• Improve the usability and reliability of the service
• Detect fraud, abuse, security threats, and technical problems
• Respond to support requests
• Comply with applicable legal obligations

We do not use children's personal information for unrelated commercial purposes.

11. Artificial Intelligence Services

METY may use artificial intelligence services to generate, adapt, analyze, or translate educational content.

For example, METY may use AI providers to:

• Create self-assessment questions
• Adapt questions for a particular subject or grade level
• Translate educational content
• Generate educational explanations or feedback

Current providers may include services such as OpenRouter and Cohere, depending on the feature being used.

METY seeks to minimize the personal information sent to AI providers.

Where practical, requests sent to AI systems should contain educational information such as:

• Subject
• Topic
• Grade level
• Language
• Assessment content

rather than information that directly identifies a student.

Users should avoid entering names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, or other identifying information into assessment-response fields unless specifically requested by METY for a legitimate purpose.

Our service providers may process information on our behalf subject to their applicable agreements and privacy/security obligations.

METY does not authorize AI service providers to use children's personal information for targeted advertising.

12. Service Providers

METY may share limited information with companies that help us operate the service.

These may include providers of:

• Website hosting
• Cloud infrastructure
• Authentication
• Databases
• Email delivery
• Security
• Error monitoring
• Artificial intelligence
• Translation

Service providers may access information only as necessary to perform services for METY and subject to applicable contractual, privacy, and security requirements.

We seek to work with service providers that are capable of maintaining the confidentiality, security, and integrity of information entrusted to them.

13. Information We Do Not Sell

METY does not sell children's personal information.

METY does not sell student assessment responses.

METY does not use student information for targeted behavioral advertising.

METY does not disclose children's personal information to third parties for their own independent marketing purposes.

14. Sharing Information

We may disclose information in limited circumstances.

Service providers

Information may be disclosed to service providers that perform services on our behalf as described above.

Parent-authorized access

A parent or guardian may authorize another person, such as a teacher, to access certain educational information associated with a student.

School-authorized educational use

When METY is provided through a school or educational organization, student information may be handled in accordance with the school's authorization, applicable contractual requirements, and applicable education privacy laws.

Legal requirements

We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to:

• Comply with applicable law
• Respond to valid legal process
• Protect the safety of users
• Investigate fraud or security incidents
• Protect METY's rights, systems, or property

We will seek to limit disclosures to information reasonably necessary for the applicable purpose.

15. Schools, FERPA, and Educational Records

METY may be used by schools or educational institutions.

When METY receives student information from or on behalf of a school, additional requirements may apply under agreements with the school and laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”).

Where applicable, METY will use education records only for authorized educational purposes and will not use school-provided student information for unrelated commercial purposes.

Schools and educational institutions remain responsible for determining their own obligations under applicable education and student-privacy laws.

16. Parent and Teacher Access Controls

Student information is intended to be accessible only to appropriately authorized users.

For example:

• A parent should be able to access only children associated with that parent's account.
• A teacher should be able to access only students for whom the teacher has valid authorization.
• Removing authorization should remove future access.
• A user should not gain access to another student's information simply by changing an identifier, link, or URL.

METY uses technical and organizational safeguards designed to enforce these access restrictions.

17. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect information against:

• Unauthorized access
• Unauthorized disclosure
• Loss
• Misuse
• Alteration
• Destruction

Security measures may include:

• HTTPS encryption
• Access controls
• Authentication
• Role-based permissions
• Database security
• Restricted administrative access
• Logging and monitoring
• Secure development practices

However, no internet service or data-storage system can guarantee absolute security.

Users should protect their account credentials and notify us if they believe an account has been compromised.

18. Data Minimization

We seek to collect only information reasonably necessary to provide METY's educational services.

Children will not be required to disclose more personal information than reasonably necessary to participate in an activity.

Where information can reasonably be provided without directly identifying a student, we seek to use less-identifying information.

19. Data Retention

METY retains personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, including to provide educational services, maintain authorized assessment history, meet legal obligations, resolve disputes, and protect security.

Different types of information may have different retention periods.

For example:

Parental-consent requests

Information collected solely to contact a parent and obtain parental consent will be deleted within a reasonable period if consent is not obtained.

Guest assessments

Guest assessment information will be retained only for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the assessment or for another disclosed legitimate purpose.

Saved assessment history

Assessment records intentionally saved to a user's account may remain until deleted by the authorized account holder or until the information is no longer required.

Security records

Limited security and diagnostic records may be retained for a reasonable period for fraud prevention, security, and system integrity.

Deleted accounts

When an account or child profile is deleted, personal information will be deleted or de-identified within a reasonable period, except where limited retention is legally required or necessary to protect against fraud, abuse, or security threats.

Information may remain temporarily in encrypted backups until those backups are overwritten in accordance with our backup-retention procedures.

20. Deletion Requests

Parents and other authorized users may request deletion of personal information associated with their account or child.

Where applicable, a parent may also request that METY:

• Stop collecting additional information from their child
• Delete information previously collected
• Withdraw consent
• Remove authorized teacher access

After verifying the requester's authority, we will process valid deletion requests within a reasonable period subject to applicable legal requirements.

21. Correcting Information

Parents and authorized account holders may request correction of inaccurate information associated with their accounts or child profiles.

Some information may also be editable directly through account settings.

22. International Users

METY may be accessible outside the United States.

Information may be processed or stored in the United States or other locations where METY's service providers operate.

Where required, we will take appropriate measures relating to international transfers of personal information.

Users outside the United States may have additional privacy rights under their local laws.

23. No Targeted Advertising to Children

METY is an educational service.

We do not use children's personal information to build advertising profiles or serve behavioral advertisements to children.

24. Third-Party Links

METY may contain links to websites or resources operated by third parties.

METY is not responsible for the privacy practices of independent third-party websites that are not operating as service providers for METY.

Users should review the privacy policies of those services before providing information to them.

25. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as METY develops or as legal requirements change.

When we make material changes, we will update the Last Updated date at the top of this page.

Where required by law, we will provide additional notice or obtain new consent before materially changing how previously collected children's personal information is used.

26. Parental Rights

Parents and legal guardians may contact METY to:

• Ask what personal information METY has collected about their child
• Review that information
• Correct information where appropriate
• Request deletion
• Withdraw consent
• Prevent further collection
• Ask how information has been used
• Ask which categories of service providers may receive the information
• Remove authorization previously given to a teacher or other user

We may require reasonable verification before providing access to children's information.

28. Notice to Parents

METY encourages parents and guardians to participate actively in their children's use of online educational services.

If you believe that METY has collected personal information from your child in a manner inconsistent with this policy or applicable children's privacy law, please contact us immediately using the information above.

We will investigate the request and take appropriate action.